CLEVELAND — An RTA bus shelter where a John Adams High School student was shot and killed in January now bears a poignant image. A child with dripping angel wings kneels on one side of the glass structure with head bowed.
“It just makes me think we have to all be safe out here, be protected in these streets because you never know what’s going to happen,” said Eric Bell, who regularly rides the No. 15 bus to and from Corlett Avenue.
The haunting black and white image evokes the vivid memory of Jan. 10.
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“It’s just really sad to know someone that young passed away right outside the school. It was just a really sad thing to hear about,” Bell recalled.
Pierre McCoy was shot and killed near the bus shelter after school dismissal that afternoon. It happened steps away from the John Adams side door and police believe several dozen peers witnessed the shooting. So far, no suspects have been arrested for the homicide.
“The image of the child angel is something I’ve probably been drawing for, I don’t know, the last 25 years. I guess the inspiration is children dying,” said artist Donald Black Jr.
The photographer and designer grew up on Cleveland’s southeast side and told News 5 death was a part of life from a young age.
“I’m a child product of this neighborhood. And kids have been tragically killed and dying at very young ages since I was a kid,” he explained.
Black’s artwork often depicts daily life. One mural off Kinsman Road near East 142nd Street shows a man and child leaning head-to-head over a game of chess. Other images show poverty, grief and trauma. The child angel is illustrated in a variety of ways on posters and screen printed on clothing.
“I’m usually paying attention to what people aren’t saying, what people aren’t talking about,” he said of his inspiration behind the art.
Black spent several months leading an art workshop at John Adams High School prior to the shooting.
“In having some conversations with a lot of the students, it seemed to be pretty much unanimous that a lot of them seemed to feel like it can happen to them at any given moment,” he said.
RELATED: 'This has got to stop': Dozens of people at bus stop when CMSD student was shot, police say
A month earlier and a mile away from where McCoy was killed outside of the high school, another 18-year-old was fatally shot outside of the Earle B. Turner rec center.
Black doesn’t claim to have a solution for the violence, but he believes they stem from larger issues like poverty and a lack of resources.
“There was a quote that I read that described poverty as the worst form of violence,” he said. “We kind of spend a lot of time talking about the symptoms of the problem. That’s usually what’s going through my mind, is that there will be more.”
When it comes to his artwork, Black said it’s up to the viewer to interpret what they see.
“If it resonates with people, it resonates with people. But I think the ability that my artwork has is to illustrate what I’m thinking and what I’m feeling,” he said. “I just want people to remember it. I want people to remember what they saw and how they felt when they saw it. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
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